Moose Hunting Vancouver WA

This page provides useful content and local businesses that can help with your search for Moose Hunting. You will find helpful, informative articles about Moose Hunting, including "Moose Hunting: Preparation and Procedures", "Moose Hunting Tactics", and "4 Tips for Hunting Late Season Moose". You will also find local businesses that provide the products or services that you are looking for. Please scroll down to find the local resources in Vancouver, WA that will answer all of your questions about Moose Hunting.

4 Tips for Hunting Late Season Moose

We don't often hear about hunting moose in the late season. An undeniable romance focuses on calling and attracting bulls during the peak of the rut; but what about when all that hormone-driven activity subsides? Where do the moose go and what do they do? More to the point, how do we hunt them in the late season? Allow me to share the events of a late season moose hunt and offer four tips that helped me close a tag last fall.

Whether we're talking about Shiras, Canada, or Alaska/Yukon moose, for much of the year bulls are reclusive by nature. They do their own thing, eating, sleeping, and moving on their own. As the rut approaches and peaks, physical antler-on-antler confrontations take place but as breeding winds down, their short-lived aggression fades back to a more docile demeanor. But as the rut concludes and moose are forced into winter survival patterns, bulls become more social, often opting to hang out in bachelor groups. At this time their focus turns to maintaining the necessities in life; eating, sleeping, and conserving energy. For the late season moose hunter who understands these dynamics, hunting can be straightforward. For those better acquainted with rutting bulls, the late season can be both uneventful and frustrating.

By way of illustration, allow me to share a textbook example; a scenario that played out over eight days during a recent late season moose hunt in Alberta, Canada.

My first opportunity came during a late November muzzleloader season. October and November's first and second estrous had come and gone. A heavy frost covered the ground. The moose we were seeing appeared to be shifting to their winter bedding and feeding routines. They simply weren't moving very much. While less than two months earlier bulls were feverishly covering ground in search of hot cows, this was no longer the case.

On one early morning hunt, about 30 minutes after leaving the truck, I spotted a bull and cow up on a hillside some 500 yards away. With a slight cross-wind, the situation was less than ideal. Carefully sneaking in, I closed the distance to 150 yards but the only possible shooting lane was obscured by a matrix of trees and branches. Then without warning the massive bull caught the swirling wind. Lifting his head high and testing the breeze, with a startle, he trotted over the hill and vanished never to be seen again.

Seldom do you see bulls hanging out with cows in the late season. More often than not, bulls will begin bunching up in small bachelor groups.

Still with an open tag, I managed to get out on several other days in early December. After covering many miles on foot and in my truck I saw several cows, calves and mostly small bulls. Only one bull was tempting, measuring around 43-inches in width, but I opted to wait. Another late season moose hunt ended and I returned home my tag still in hand. Unsure if I'd be able to return, my hopes of taking a big bull were fading fast but in the end, thanks to a supportive w...

Moose Hunting Tactics

The day was stuck halfway between summer and winter. Dun moths dervished in the warmth of the mid-morning sun, but at least a dozen high flying skeins of migrating Canada geese had etched their way across a cloudless sky since daybreak, driven southward by the steady encroachment of winter. It was just a matter of days before the first blizzard of the winter would rake through the wilderness pasting the windward sides of the tree trunks with a three-inch layer of snow and bringing down the last sere leaves of summer.

Secretly, I wished the day would stay stuck right where it was for a few days or even weeks longer.

Somewhere, across the distant ridge or perhaps a thousand miles away, I was sure other hunters had watched the sun rise and watched the edge between night and day, the line between brightness and shadow creep slowly down clusters of golden tamaracks on the other side of the clearing and then across the tan marsh sedges to eventually yield to full daylight. I'd spent almost a week morning and evening in this same stand watching over this same forsaken marsh, but I lingered just a little longer, relishing the warmth of the late September sun on my back and wondering about those other hunters, in other tree stands in other wilderness havens across North America.

We're probably about a million strong from coast to coast, counting moose hunters on both sides of the Canada-US border, and we hunt three different species of moose. The largest of these is the Alaskan moose known to biologists as Alces alces gigas; mature bulls often weight more than three quarters of a ton and carry antlers more than five feet wide. At the other end of the scale is the small, rather pale Shiras or Wyoming moose, Alces alces shirasi, found in the Rocky Mountains on both sides of the Canada-US border. In between is the Canada moose, Alces alces Americana that is most widespread through northern North America, though some biologists classify the western moose as a subspecies called Alces alces andersoni because of minor differences in the bone structure of the skull. Fact is that, without a pair of calipers in hand to measure each individual cranial component, it's virtually impossible to tell the difference between the moose that roam the Peace River region of Alberta and the rolling hills of Quebec's Gaspesian Peninsula, between the animals that thrive in the spruce forests of insular Newfoundland and those found in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Moose are ideally suited to their habitat.

To the casual observer who happens to see a moose by the side of the road or in a park, these largest members of the deer family appear large, ugly and ungainly. And, I must admit that, in this context the description is apt. Yet, seen in its natural habitat of hinterland bogs and spruce forests, the animal is graceful and magnificently suited to a harsh environment. Those who have hunted moose know that they can appear and disappear like ghosts, that they can be b...

Moose Hunting: Preparation and Procedures

The near-sonic boom of the fire-breathing .454 Casul blasted the entire forest as the bull spun away from the hunter in the tree stand. In an instant, the huge bull was gone, as if it never existed. Thick scrub made stalking impossible, each step produced an amplified crack, notifying every living creature within ear shoot to scram. To be successful, moose hunters must become invisible and have vision of an eagle. A moose hunter also requires ears that hear the slightest of sounds in howling winds.

Moose hunters are an odd lot, they require the patience of a saint, legs of an experienced trekker and a keen sense of direction. This article seeks to demystify moose hunting from my experience hunting moose in Alaska. While Alaskan moose (acles alces gigas) are a bit different than those found in other regions , the ideas presented here should apply to those hunting other moose species (alces alces americana, alces alces shirasi, and acles acles andersoni) in places like Washington, Colorado, Utah, Montana, Maine, and some of the Canadian Provinces.

The Basics

The bull (pictured below) is partially hidden in the brush, it's the way they are usually spotted. Sometimes as quiet as a mouse, moose will stand still for long moments to determine what you are. A creature of flight, they are wary of everything and the slightest disruption will send them crashing into the woods or over the next mountaintop.

Moose are crepuscular creatures, meaning they are most active in the early morning hours and late day, much like bats and insects. They have a great sense of hearing and any noise you create will cause them to become focused upon the direction of where it came from. Add to their merit a sense of smell that is also acute and now you have an animal that will put any big game hunter to the test.

The terrain which moose inhabit is most important in planning and executing your hunt. Hunting waterways by boat is a great way to cover distances that you could not cover otherwise and common sense dictates that the more territory you cover the more likely you will run into an animal worthy of your cartridge.

Know your wind direction at all times since nothing spooks any big game animal more than the scent of a human out in the woods. At times it is impossible to be in the right wind direction when you observe a moose, therefore it is advisable to become part of the landscape, freeze! Nothing will alert a moose more than movement. Many times I have come across a moose unexpectedly and if I freeze in my tracks, they usually will not spook and run off. It's rather remarkable that an animal that is so huge can be so hard to spot but it's true. When in the mountains, don't make yourself a silhouette by standing on the ridge line, stay just below it in order to gain a vantage point but not to become highly visible.

When stalking, stay low and try to shield their line of vision to you by natural obstacles such as any trees, vegetation, rocks etc. In the rutt...

This page provides useful content and local businesses that can help with your search for Mountain Lion Hunting. You will find helpful, informative articles about Mountain Lion Hunting, including "South Dakota Bow Hunter Takes Mountain Lion", "South Dakota Wants to Increase Mountain Lion Limit", and "Mountain Lion Hunt Protesters Draw Licenses". You will also find local businesses that provide the products or services that you are looking for. Please scroll down to find the local resources in Vancouver, WA that will answer all of your questions about Mountain Lion Hunting.